The Fed concluded it's two-day meeting Wednesday holding steady as she goes. Using the guise of what many consider phony "strong job numbers" and moderate economic growth, they dangled the bait of possibly hiking rates later this year. In the parlance, that means tightening monetary policy.
That was the on-the-one-hand message. Here is the on-the-other-hand one economists are infamous for spewing at the drop of an aggregate indicator. Any aggregate indicator. Risks are loitering out there from an uncertain global scene even as these monetary geniuses consider two quarter-point rate hikes before 2016 rolls around.
We don't want to digress, but in our brief visit to this dimension the global scene seems to have been something less than certain most of the time. It appears for all their searching and praying they turned up the scent of inflation in recent months. So we have a "range of recent indicators" that include strong job gains, the scent of inflation and any other phantasmagoria they can use to cover their you know what after they hike rates.
What makes the Fed so pathetic is these economic-soothsayers' pretensions that they know something about the unknowable, the future. So their way of telling the rest of us is they lowered their estimate of where the targeted lending rate would be in the long run. Somewhere between 3.30 and 3.50 percent. In case you want to unriddle that riddle, it's the econo-speak way of spelling tepid.
Back in December, a distant three months ago, they were projecting four rate jumps this year after a 0.25% rate increase then. That was the first rate hike in 10 years. Though they've got whiff of inflation, they also lowered their prediction of inflation for this year to 1.2% from 1.6%.
About now you ought to as confused as they are. But there's more. There always is. They also see a decline in unemployment, falling to 4.7 percent by year end and even dropping more in 2017 and 2018.
Oh yea, one voting FOMC member dissented.
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